------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 54 Today's Topics: WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: DOES BLAKE BLEACH GOD? Re: Eve's Reason Re: scholars' bodies Blake on Blacks From Renaissance to Siena RE: Eve's Reason Re: WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: DOES BLAKE BLEACH GOD? Re: scholars' bodies Call for writers for Blake & Milton Opera Inquiry... 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood Milton Opera Update Re: Milton Opera Update Re: 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood Re: 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood the hand & apple, 3fold ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 22:11:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: DOES BLAKE BLEACH GOD? Message-Id: <199605170511.WAA16666@igc2.igc.apc.org> "Yet, there are blacks who have said good-bye to 'God.' Sickened by the sight of many a black folk kneeling in front of Michelangelo's models and William Blake's _Ancient Days_, they have become aware of the 'historical' bleaching of divine figures." from: Gordon, Lewis R. BAD FAITH AND ANTIBLACK RACISM. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995. p. 146 Admittedly I avoid churches like the plague, which means I only enter them when I have to attend funerals. I have never seen any Blake pictures in black churches, let alone found anyone kneeling in front of any. Where does this happen? And why blame Blake? I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone of Blake trivia. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 00:46:39 -0500 From: cxh36@psu.edu (Chad Hayton) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Eve's Reason Message-Id: <199605170529.FAA15812@r02n05.cac.psu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:23 AM 5/15/96 -0700, D. A. Ellison wrote: > >I beg to differ on just one small point. Is the question of "who made thee?" >simply >rhetorical? Isn't this the same question, in a different phrasing, which is >asked of >the Tyger? >I feel that this was an important point for Blake. His questioning of >organized >christianity. In actuality, it is one of the basic questions, that comes to >mind, when >questioning the christian tenet of a benevolent god. To paraphrase, "Could >the same >divine entity that created a innocent lamb also create a tyger?" >I think that we are dealing with aspects and perspective in this particular >instance. >Two aspects of the same divine entity and the perspective of any particular >individual. > As much as Blake was against the scrutiny and formalization of science, I >feel, he >still scrutinized the face of his god with a scientific thoroughness. > >Cordially, >R.A.E. Dr. Ellison, This is an interesting point. In my opinon, however, the question is meant to be tansparently rhetorical in regard to both the lamb and the tyger, although the obvious answer that God made both of these things is meant to be uncomfortable when applied to the tyger. What is jarring here is the consonance of the two answers. Since God is the maker of all things it follows that the same divine power contains both gentleness and violence, both forgiveness and judgement, and perhaps love and hate. Thus I would agree that "we are dealing with aspects and perspective in this particular instance" but would argue that these perspecitves are created through the use of rhetorical questions. Because the answer is obvious we are forced to confront a fundamental paradox of God's nature. To say that these questions are rhetorical does not mean that they are *merely* rhetorical; they obviously have a serious and thoughtful message. But it seems that Blake is drawing upon the "obvious" nature of the rhetorical question to pose the very problem you suggest that The Tyger asks: "Could the same divine entity that created a innocent lamb also create a tyger?" Sincerely, Chad Hayton Pennsylvania State University ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 00:55:12 -0500 From: cxh36@psu.edu (Chad Hayton) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: scholars' bodies Message-Id: <199605170537.FAA32736@r02n05.cac.psu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 6:58 PM 5/16/96 -0500, Mark Trevor Smith wrote: >Actually, they sound like some disembodied aliens who have reached a higher, >more serene plane of being. And who is more fully human, an aged scholar >with decrepid body or an athlete of no mind, whose old age will bring no >solace of the spirit? Good point. But if it is unfair to assume that scholars are feeble because of their intellectual pursuits, it is equally unfair to assume that atheltes are mentally weak because of thier "physical pursuits." Both scholars and atheltes can be vigorous and intellegent; they are not mutually exclusive states of being. Sincerely, Chad Hayton Pennsylvania State University ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:38:48 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake on Blacks Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Actually, I'm going to extend a handshake of agreement to Mr. Ralph Dumain on the criticism about Blake not going far enough on the "black" issue. I mean, this WAS the poet who said blacks would have less to absolve themselves from, compared to whites, as far as his concept of revised "sin". Also, art needs to be looked at in the time it was created. There is a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln liberating the slaves in my hometown (which is Boston, the most powerful bastion of abolitionism the North had going for it, to my knowledge) in which the ex-slaves are looking up at their liberator. From a late 20th century view, it's insulting and ridiculous. Nowadays, we'd probably have the ex-slaves standing up, AT LEAST as tall as Lincoln, and shaking hands as equals, right? But that's not how it was perceived when this sculpture was done. And, yes, the sculpture still stands, despite demands that it be taken down. We can complain about Shakespeare's treatment of women, or even worse in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides... but the truths that these artists pull through time and into our present far outweigh their prejudices, in my opinion. And what prejudices do we have, that we're not even aware of, by the way? -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:09:27 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: From Renaissance to Siena Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1795 was a banner year for Blake's visual art, as seen at the Tate. The watercolour/print/pen efforts of that time were outstanding, and clearly draw from Michelangelo's bold brilliance in colour, shape, and form. I don't think I've yet mentioned the classic "God Judging Adam", in which Adam clearly looks like God. (Unlike the "Elohim creating Adam" piece.) With wisdom comes gray hair? Or did we create God in our own image... this comes back to "The Lamb" again, doesn't it? And even if, scouring through as many William Morris and Dante Rossetti biographies as I could find at the Victoria and Albert Museum's special show on Morris (Morris was so cute in the way he leather-bound a special edition of Marx's CAPITAL), only to find scant references to Blake when made at all... I still see "Pity" as an apex of visual Romanticism to which the Arts and Crafts geniuses were either greatly indebted or kindred spirits. Sometimes, for instance, I wonder why Guatemalen textiles look so much like Chiang Mai Thai textiles. Contact? In the Arts and Crafts case, it would seem to be the case. But if 1795 was a banner year for Blake the visual artist, I see 1799 as a year when he was... doing something else. The images on display at the Tate from that time are fuzzy. In particular, "Christ the Mediator: Christ Pleading before the father for St Mary Magdalene" and "The Flight into Egypt" recall the more Medieval art of Siena to the bright and bold designs of Michelangelo. Not that Blake merely STAYED with this particular style... but it is interesting for an artist who complained about the fuzziness of certain Northern European painters that he went muddy in these paintings, himself. Mysticism gets invoked, rather than bold pronouncements like "Newton" or the "Good and Evil Angels" painting (which graces the cover of the British version of Ackroyd's biography on Blake). Even "Christ Blessing the Little Children" is a fuzzy effort. Or maybe his handling of the medium of tempera on canvas versus the print/watercolour/pen is the answer here. Implications of the ethereal nature in the Bible themes? And then of course there's "The Ghost of a Flea"... one of my favorites. It's dated 1819-20, although there's a story that at least the drawing of the face came late at night/early in the morning, as many of Blake's revelations did. Another dark Sienese-like effort. And talk about STRANGE... Complex and contradictory. Morris was a socialist whose products were out of reach, financially, except for the elite whom he worked to bring down. Blake was a revolutionary who clung to the desart faith (although, once devoured, it became something quite else in his prolific works) instead of the Greco-Roman ideals that I see him mastering in something like his illustrations to Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Graveyard" or the blithe spirits in "Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing", based on Shakespeare's MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM circa 1785. Plus, Blake had people like Bacon to reject, who took Aristotle's "speculation, then drop it", theory to the much better conclusion of "try it, refine it, in light of results". Yup. That's complex, and contradictory, if you ask me. Neither Newton, Bacon, Locke, nor any of these other great thinkers that came out of the Renaissance's afterglow REJECT that there's something more. In fact, late Newton admits that what he did was only the tip of an iceberg. And who is to confuse science for art, anyway? But no, it's just a sleep. An ULRO (acronym misspelling?)... I find it interesting that Blake, whose beliefs about Christianity are clearly heresy, asked for the last rites as he died. Cover all bases? On a similar theme, I find it interesting that a cross is outside D.H. Lawrence's ashes-site on that ranch north of Taos. Maybe the cross was for Frieda. Or maybe in his own way, Lawrence, who wrote the blasphemous _The Man Who Died_, thought he really was a Christian, in the end, after all. And, yes, I agree with David V. Erdman that Blake influenced Nietzsche, Freud, and D.H. Lawrence. Funny how Lawrence started life as a schoolteacher, probably excited about science as well as arts... only later to rail and rail and rail against the Industrial Revolution. Good for you, Lawrence! Good for you, Blake! You're right: private property sucks! We all should be EQUAL (even if you two were megalomaniacs). And keep on hoping for the Apocalypse to straighten things out! Somehow, through the Rapture, we'll all merge and leave this junk behind! Comparative artists, as well as comparative contemporaries, helps widen my view on Blake. -R.H. Albright http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html where the waters have been changing again..................................... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:12:26 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: RE: Eve's Reason Message-Id: <9605171517.AA12985@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Heather wrote, >However, simply on the diference between the question asked the Lamb >and the question asked the Tyger, I still believe the Lamb's is rhetorical >because the child knows the answer and the Tyger's is not because the speaker >is unsure of the creator of the Tyger. Almost every descrpition of the Tyger's >creator begins with a question, while the descriptions of the Lamb's creator >give us concrete details about Christ: "He is meek and He is mild. . ." etc. >In the end we have an answer to the child's question in Innocence and a >variation on the original question of the speaker in Experience. There is no >answer to the Tyger's origin. I would just add that, while your description of the questions in both poems is entirely accurate, there's another interesting contrast. While the speaker in Experience frames (inadvertent pun there!) his account of the Tyger's creation with genuine questions, he nonetheless gives us a clearer picture of the creative process, even throuh those questions, than we get in "The Lamb," where the lamb is simply "made" and "given" his voice, fleece, etc. The speaker in "The Tyger" may not know whose hand "seized the fire," but he somehow knows that it must be seized in order to create. Is the poem a tribute to the courage of the artist? Or is it a projection of the limits of human art (hammer, anvil, chains) onto divine creation? Sometimes I think one, sometimes the other. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:27:26 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: DOES BLAKE BLEACH GOD? Message-Id: <9605171533.AA04946@uu7.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The only "bleaching" I know of is in "Little Black Boy," where the black child is bleached, you might say, in the presence of God so that the white child (or perhaps God--the syntax is ambiguous) will love him. An extremely problematic poem, and I'm surprised it doesn't come up on this list as often as "A Poison Tree" or the Lamb/Tyger. Interesting question about Blake in churches. I've never seen it. JM ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:05:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Russell Prather To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: scholars' bodies Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Your message is very reassuring. Thank you. -russ prather On Thu, 16 May 1996, Mark Trevor Smith wrote: > Although I myself certainly intend to let my body slowly fade away, > I have observed exactly the opposite of what Prather prathers about: > my elder colleagues are quite full-bodied and some of them more > vigorous than average. And the eminent or productive scholars that > I have known have been extraordinarily vigorous in body. IN particular > David Erdman reminded me of Blake himself in his square, earthly, > powerful body. And Leslie Marchand, although certainly small, led a > group of us many years his junior on a merry, breath-taking jaunt > through the snowy streets of Manhattan about 20 years ago. Ex-soccer > adept Michael Cooke could outrun anybody, I'll wager, and the list goes > on and on, limited only by my scanty contacts. I could name about five > or six more easily. -- Mark > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 13:16:01 -0400 From: Golgonooz@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Call for writers for Blake & Milton Opera Message-Id: <960517131600_115667094@emout07.mail.aol.com> The Blake & Milton Opera project currently has an opening for a Dramatist (preferably a woman to complement our creative team). For more information, Please contact Dana Harden at Golgonooz@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: May 17, 1996 12:44:41 From: Elizabeth Ann Bickley To: blake@albion.com Subject: Inquiry... Message-Id: <199605171944.MAA29614@sol.calstatela.edu> Hello. I joined the list about three weeks ago and have found all of your ideas insightful and challenging. I know I've remained extremely quiet but I do plan to participate soon. Currently I am working on two projects revolving around Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Butler Yeats. I was wondering if anyone knew of a listserve for either one of these poets? If you do, it would be so helpful. Thanks for your time, Liz ebickle@calstatela.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 15:49:16 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David V. Erdman is doing great stuff on the Web! And if you're a member of this group or know Mr. Erdmanm, _Blake Prophet Against Empire_ is superlative, too! I have the 1977 edition. Erdman's Digital Blake Project aims at providing (I guess...) The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake Erdman provides the original Songs of Innocence plate (1789): http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~nhilton/SIE/2/2all.html and the combined Songs of Innocence and Experience plate (1794): (to get there from original Innocence plate, click on CDIP): http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~nhilton/SIE/1/1all.html For the time being, the images are stark black and white. This is both a liability and an asset. The download times are fast, and the stark contrast of the print alone is quite powerful. Just think of this as your basic black and white xerox that you then got to color a thousand different ways. -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 18:09:53 -0400 From: WomansWay@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Milton Opera Update Message-Id: <960517180952_296593476@emout19.mail.aol.com> Due to some recent inquirerys on this list, following is a description of networking we need for the opera I am creating based on William Blake's, Milton, a Poem in Two Books. I am seeking your help in networking with potential investors and opera or theater companies to produce Milton Goes to Hell. This will be a full length world premier performance of this new composition based on a major literary work never previously staged. The music and libretto intend to enhances Blake's artistry, creating a very personalized and accessible experience of the Milton myth for the listener. As many of you know, the protagonist of Blake's poem is John Milton, the seventeenth century author of Paradise Lost. Milton represented to Blake England's finest visionary and poet, but with puritanical distortions in his beliefs. Milton's journey is each of our journeys. We join his descent to the underworld to reclaim his feminine self he has exiled into a hell of unfulfilled desires.. We will stage two performances of the opera in Boulder in November 1996. The libretto corresponds to the portion of Blake's story called, "The Bards Song". It will be performed by acoustic and synthesized orchestral instruments to accompany a cast of vocalists. They will be visually surrounded by a virtual universe based on Blake's artwork. Blake's language of gestures will be incorporated into the choreography. The work has been in progress for two years and has a core staff of thirteen members. Funding is needed to further stage this production and the rest of Milton, a Poem in Two Books in the following years. This will include developing "Virtual Sets" based on Blake's artwork and to finish scoring and staging the libretto. If you have any suggestions, and/or want more information, please contact me at the above address. Warmly, Dana Harden Golgonooza Productions P.O. Box 19614 Boulder CO, 80308-2614 PH & FAX: (303) 530-7617 E-Mail: Golgonooz@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 18:09:59 -0400 From: WomansWay@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Milton Opera Update Message-Id: <960517180958_296593541@emout09.mail.aol.com> Thanks Jennifer for your comments about using," the phrase "feminine self." Although it sounds simpler, it also doesn't adequately represent the complex relation between "self" and "other", in my opinion". We are trying to use as much original poetry as possible of Blake & Milton for the opera. However, I am constantly reminded that most audience members need basic dramatic clarity and the subtler complexities will only be revealed to those who experience this work (and hopefully Blake's original) more than once. Dana Harden ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 20:50:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Nelson Hilton To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 17 May 1996, this was posted: > > http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~nhilton/SIE/2/2all.html > Please note that this address is no longer correct; use http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/SIE/2/2all.html ~~~~~~~ The ascii version of the first half of e-E can now be seen at same site. Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 May 96 13:23:45 CDT From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: 1/2 The Same Poems, Different Mood Message-Id: <9605181829.AA27315@uu6.psi.com> Thanks to Nelson for this service to the literary community. I have downloaded the 400 pages now available. If you look in the real E, you will notice that 400 pages covers almost all the poetry, leaving the textual and commentarial notes. This e-E will be very useful for me in two ongoing projects. On Fri, 17 May 1996 20:50:02 -0400 (EDT) Nelson Hilton said: > http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/SIE/2/2all.html > ~~~~~~~ >The ascii version of the first half of e-E can now be seen at >same site. > > Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens > Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? > http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 12:58:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: the hand & apple, 3fold Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To All: This is a continuation of the previous discussion of fourfold vision of my hand as it holds an apple. THREEFOLD VISION The Apple: Immanent within the structure of this fruiting dicot the apple is the quantity four and/or five. As a member of the rose family, it is similar in development, structure, and fruiting to other roses such as strawberries. In Threefold vision, Blake refers to "Beulah's sleep" so that as my simultaneous visions broaden and deepen, the forthcoming inclusions mirror semantic ambiguities approached in dreams as this apple resonates visually with chords of other roses harmonically expressed as strawberries and plums. As any student of electrical engineering knows, Fourier was a brilliant 17th century mathematician who invented the integrals which describe sine waves. Devalois then demonstrated that Area 17 of the human visual cortex uses this methodology in the spatial frequency domain, and it has been established conclusively that the basilar membrane within the middle ear also analyzes complex temporal waveforms by devolving them into their constituent harmonics. The point here however, is that Fourier always stressed that the birth and development of ideas is formally isomorphic with the birth and development of living creatures. Fourier described the birth of his integrals as flowing directly from the fact that for many years he slept with a copy of Ohm's most important work by his bedside. (Ohm was the fellow who developed the measurement of electrical resistance). The birth of an idea has three principal phases: 1. Inoculation 2. Incubation 3. Illumination First Fourier was inoculated with the brilliant ideas of Ohm about electrical impedance formulae. Then it incubated for several years as he gestated the fruits of Ohm's knowledge. Finally, Fourier developed the extraordinary type of integral calculus essential to understanding any periodic activity. The similarities are not trivial to say the development of a fruit or a mammalian embryo. The stigma is inoculated by pollen from the anther. After fertilization, the fruiting ovary enlarges and gestates during incubation. Finally the mature fruit drops, and the fruit of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil is offered up. Human pregnancy is formally similar. As twofold vision deepens into threefold vision the fruits of our dreams (Beulah's sleep) become more apparent. For example, the legendary 13th century Japanese poet Dogen describes a dream of Buddah as follows: "When the old plum tree suddenly opens, the world of blossoming flowers arises. At the moment when the world of blossoming flowers arises, spring arrives. There is a single blossom that opens five blossoms, hundreds, thousands, myriads, billions of blossoms-countless blossoms. Blossoming is the old plum tree's offering." And, "One blossom opens five petals. The fruit matures of itself." From "Moon in a Dewdrop", Writings of Zen Master Dogen... In short, as you perceive the overriding harmony of the natural world through threefold vision, the distinctions between dreams and lingering objectivism become less arbitrary. THREEFOLD VISION: My hand: Through serial homology, my hand proposes the "hand" of a lizard climbing rocks. The fingernails are like claws, and the differentiation between the thumb and the fingers, and analogies of clutching grasping all propose differing instrumentation in this symphony of vertebral homology. Some humans, especially Occidentals, tend to cleave the world into such nominalized fragments that they shatter the isomorphisms extant between their ideas and what those ideas describe. Dumain understands that Lenin addressed this problem, and Ralph is trying to elegantly triangulate three superficially diverse thought. But it is quite possible that this propagation of Manichean insanity by single-lobed types is to some extent an artifact of a terrestial environment. My hand, and the hand of the lizard embryonically develop outward into differentiable digits (fingers). At the base of these fingers, they are connected by webbing. So if I compare my hand to the hand of a lizard in one direction of homologous description, than I tend to describe terrestial animals. Those with cloved hoofs, those birds with similar claws, those koalas shearing leaves from eucalyptus trees. But if I focus my triple vision instead on the webbing between the fingers, I notice the parallels between the webbing of my hand, the hand of a lizard, and the flippers of a dolphin which are almost entirely webbed. In a marine environment, all parts of the environment are connected and touch each other through the medium of water. It is integrated by virtue of its basic structure. For those who propose a link between possessing fingers and the ability to count digitally to ten, the reasonable subsequent link between the possession of fingers and digital communication becomes more defensible. Indeed these links between the shapes of serially expressed proteins folded into vertebral structures and the homologous description of ideas is not a trivial one. In his landmark book published by Cambridge University in l902 (now in its 12th printing) D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson in On Growth and Form lays out, on a Cartesian x-y grid, apparently superficial differences between crab shells of different species and jaws from different mammals. He then proves that merely by imposing simple hyberbolic and parabolic transformations upon the x-y grid describing these shapes, anyone can produce the shapes of most of the major species. Elementary evolutionary morphology. So that what is evolving when we classify something as a "new species" is to some extent simple algebraic transformations upon previous jawbones, hands, beaks, and carapaces. It is the algebraic equations that are evolving. And surely algebraic equations are ideas, at least more so than the stone that Bishop Berkeley kicked in disgust at the solipsists... Next week, four fold vision...(or a fourfold description of it...!) Note: Both question marks and cat's paws occur at the end of transformational artifacts and are used to glean information about the outside world. More on that next week... Until then, may all your paw prints be fourfold, I am, respectfully yours, Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #54 *************************************